MWC 2022 live blog: Samsung Galaxy event has wrapped up

Annual tech event MWC 2022 is about to begin

It’s that time of the year: Mobile World Congress 2022 (shortened to MWC) is here, ready to bring us boat-loads of new gadgets from all the world’s biggest tech companies.

MWC is an annual tech event which generally takes place in late-February, though we haven’t seen a proper one since 2019 thanks to the pandemic. It takes place in Barcelona, Spain, and it’s one of the biggest events in the calendar for fans of tech and smartphones.

Kicking off on February 28, MWC 2022 is scheduled to run until March 2, though some tech companies actually often jump the gun and use the Sunday (this year the 27th) for their events. So we could hear about the first launches any time now.

TechRadar has roving reporters on the ground in Barcelona, as well as lots of expert journalists covering the event from afar. So expect a week of news, hands-on reviews, analyses and event coverage from loads of brands including Xiaomi, Samsung, Realme, Huawei, OnePlus, Oppo, Honor and more.

With this live blog, we’ll bring you all the big news as it happens, so it can be your one-stop-shop for all the important details to come from the event. 

20:39:01 – February 27, 2022

Well, that’s it for TechRadar for today.

Thanks for following along with the MWC 2022 announcements that we’ve already seen, and we’ll pick this live blog back up bright and early tomorrow morning ready for the busy day of fun.

20:20:55 – February 27, 2022

Tomorrow, or Day 1 as we’ll call it, is looking a lot busier. There’s set to be launch events from:

• Realme
• Xiaomi / Pocophone
• Oppo
• Honor

And maybe a few more brands besides. Each company could unveil multiple devices, and it could be a really busy couple of hours. So this is set to be the day when our coverage will really ramp up.

20:02:42 – February 27, 2022

So what have we seen today, in day -1 of MWC?

• Huawei hosted its launch event which brought a new E-Ink tablet, a new budget tablet and its debut portable Bluetooth speaker, amongst other things.
• TCL launched five new budget Android phones
• Samsung launched two new laptops

19:17:23 – February 27, 2022

Nope, it seems that’s it for the first pre-day of MWC. We’ll give brands a little more time before winding down this live blog for the day. 18:27:32 – February 27, 2022

The very short Samsung event is over, and the laptops were the only products unveiled during it.

The pre-MWC day is nearly over, so if there’s more to come, we expect it to be along very shortly. Or maybe there isn’t.

18:06:52 – February 27, 2022

Samsung’s event is for the Galaxy Book 2 Pro and Galaxy Book 2 Pro 5G – yep, those are some tongue-twister names.

Despute the ‘M’ in ‘MWC’ standing for ‘mobile’, lots of companies do show off their new laptops at the event, so this isn’t a huge surprise – but it does result in lots of mobile journalists having to work out lots of laptop specs!

Read our full Galaxy Book 2 Pro story here for all the specs and information on these new laptops.

We’ll stay tuned to the Samsung Galaxy event in case any new products are launched too.

18:02:00 – February 27, 2022

Samsung’s event has begun – here’s the link to tune in.

17:48:34 – February 27, 2022

Samsung’s event live stream has started, but we’re just seeing a looping animation of the Samsung MWC teaser at the moment. Expect the real deal to start in 10 minutes.

Despute the ‘M’ in ‘MWC’ standing for ‘mobile’, lots of companies do show off their new laptops at the event, so this isn’t a huge surprise – but it does result in lots of mobile journalists having to work out lots of laptop specs!

Read our full Galaxy Book 2 Pro story here for all the specs and information on these new laptops.

We’ll stay tuned to the Samsung Galaxy event in case any new products are launched too.

18:02:00 – February 27, 2022

Samsung’s event has begun – here’s the link to tune in.

17:48:34 – February 27, 2022

Samsung’s event live stream has started, but we’re just seeing a looping animation of the Samsung MWC teaser at the moment. Expect the real deal to start in 10 minutes.

17:04:31 – February 27, 2022

There’s about an hour to go until the next event: Samsung’s MWC event.

You can find a placeholder on YouTube here – it’s set to start 15 minutes before the event actually does, but there will probably be some pre-able footage beforehand. The real thing starts on the hour.

We don’t actually know what to expect from this event, so make sure to pay attention. Or not, that’s what this live blog is for after all.

16:26:19 – February 27, 2022

TCL also showed off a few more gadgets as part of its MWC collection.

The most interesting is the one that’s depicted above, the TCL NxtPaper Max 10, which is a 10-inch Android tablet with an E-Ink screen (like a Kindle). However it seems like this device is only releasing in Asia.

There are also a few more Android tablets, including a re-release of the NxtPaper 10s which we saw at CES in January.

The NxtWear Air was shown off, and these are some smart glasses, though again we’ve already seen them. Finally there was a huge collection of audio products with loads of true wireless earbuds that you might see on store shelves or Amazon soon.

16:09:00 – February 27, 2022

And there’s been another product launch, and this has brought us the first smartphones of MWC 2022.

TCL has launched five new phones. Check out our coverage on them here, but for the brief low-down, they are:

• TCL 30
• TCL 30 Plus
• TCL 30 5G
• TCL 30 E
• TCL 30 SE

These are five budget phones, and they’re all pretty similar too, but we don’t imagine all of them will drop in any one region.

15:53:57 – February 27, 2022

One other interesting device from Huawei’s conference: the new MatePad. Yep, the successor to the Huawei MatePad 11 doesn’t have a number.

You can read our whole Huawei MatePad report here, but it’s a fairly low-cost HarmonyOS tablet that could be tempting for people who are split between an Amazon or iPad tablet.

It’s got a 10.4-inch 2K screen which seems like its biggest feature, but also stylus compatibility and a thin design.

15:30:32 – February 27, 2022

Here’s another device from the Huawei press conference that we’re intrigued by: the Huawei Sound Joy may have a weird name, but it’s the company’s first-ever portable Bluetooth speaker.

This gadget has four speakers, a 8,800mAh battery life (26 hours of use, according to Huawei), IP67 resistance and costs €149 (around $170, £130 or AU$230, though availability hasn’t been confirmed yet).

We’ll have to test this out to see if Huawei can hold its own against Sonos or JBL, but it looks pretty neat.

14:28:30 – February 27, 2022

o that Huawei event was surprisingly eventful.

Perhaps the biggest announcement was the Huawei MatePad Paper, a new E-Ink tablet-slash-ereader that’s coming to Euro soon.

It’s bigger and more powerful that the Amazon Kindle, which is the natural rival to any E-Ink device, and also comes with stylus support, video playback and handwriting recognition. Very nifty!

Read our full news on the Huawei MatePad Paper for all the details on this device, but we’re pretty keen to test it out when possible.

13:31:33 – February 27, 2022

Okay, here we go – things are starting to kick off, and it’s Huawei who are first out of the blocks with their press conference – you can watch it right now.

This conference is named “Huawei Spring 2022 Smart Office Launch”, which means business related announcements, rather than consumer devices. We’re keeping an eye on it however, just in case.

12:28:26 – February 27, 2022

Though nothing’s launched yet, some companies have been announcing their MWC 2022 plans.

Case in point, Mobvoi (which makes TicWatch smartwatches) has announced it’s launching a new device on March 1.

This seems to be a smartwatch with an emphasis on heart rate tracking features – we’ll make sure to bring you the news whenever Mobvoi officially announces this device. 11:16:11 – February 27, 2022

And we begin! Sunday technically isn’t part of MWC, since the event only truly kicks off tomorrow, but that doesn’t stop some companies.

We already know Samsung is doing something today, and that’s the biggest news through Sunday that we’re aware of – but we might see other companies debut devices without warning too.

By Tom Bedford